A newsletter for the Portland area Didjeridu player......December 1999 Volume 5 Issue 12
What will this mean for the contemporary, non-Aboriginal Didjeridu player? Or teacher? Or performing/recording artist? Cheerfully, I don't know. We will all learn together. But thinking about the possibilities are exciting. To have access to the very founders of our instruments within the reach of those who really want it is very exciting indeed. It will, no doubt affect the instruction, the education and the commodification of the "Didjeridu industry" a great deal. I think there will be a lot more attention to intellectual property and cultural theft in the so called "new age". If you haven't yet, you should and soon will read about how Aboriginal art has been duplicated, mis-represented and sold without permission. It is hard to explain, let alone believe, the truth of what's been going on. For a real education, I'd suggest you look over the project at the "House of Aboriginality". Here you will learn about some blatant examples of directly stealing artistic property and selling it in the most disrespectful and hurtful ways. Deeply personal family heritage, just stolen. And a few layers down you'll learn about an American Author who made up a story about Aboriginal people out of the whole cloth and represented it as spiritual truth. When confronted by a mountain of evidence refuting her story and even a delegation of elders pleading for a public retraction, she continues this day to profit from this misrepresentation. But, as the popular American television series asserts, "the truth is out there". Indeed it is, and it's never been more accessible than before.
Just as players, we need to develop the skills of careful listening to play our best, as people we need to develop our listening to the degree that we can really hear even what we don't wish to in order to be the best people we can be. We should explore all our relationships with such passion and attention to detail as we do our relationships with our instruments. In the coming year, I hope to write more articles about how various Aboriginal communities and individuals are stepping into the world wide web and directly sharing their thoughts, hopes and feelings about the world with us. This is as important to good didj playing as circular breathing. Perhaps more, as a way of better understanding all the issues surrounding the didjeridu industry will help assure that the most important parts of the didjeridu are shared. The relationship between our cultures is vastly more important that the simple instrument we've grabbed onto almost thoughtlessly. So in the coming months, I plan to review web sites, field recordings and hopefully interview more players to assure that this web site maintains some connection to Australia. As Africa is the mother continent to all drumming, it is Australia, after all, where all didjeridu players owe homage.
As Didjeridu players, we are perhaps the most blind to the truth. Perhaps because there are so many of us who actually believe that the propagation of the instrument justifies the commodification and mis-representation that goes on in the pipeline of instrument production, distribution and sales. This aspect has been the subject of repeated discussions on the Didjeridu Digest list server during the past five years I've been writing and editing this series. At times, it's been a witch hunt with various vendors and suppliers being indicted. There is now at least a voice coming from the traditional owners of the instrument that is speaking about the separation of Yidaki from it's origins and sacred stories and presenting ways to exchange the processes of collecting, making, performing and teaching which will reconnect it to it's traditional owners as an instrument of cultural expression. Because of the high demand for the instrument created by "mainstream" consumerism, instruments made in the traditional way are becoming very hard to find. And when you do, they more and more expensive. This has lead to people purchasing lower costing alternatives. Now even these lower cost alternatives are getting more expensive as salesmanship enters into the picture and the assertion is that these alternative instruments are "better" than the real thing. In some respects, there is some validity to that claim. Alternative didjs are made largely with the mainstream ideas of performance in mind - not the traditional setting. In fact, there are many thousands of rather accomplished Didjeridu players in the world now who have little idea of what the traditional role of the instrument they play really is. Most of the ideas about how a Didjeridu should sound have been formed from listening to non-aboriginal players playing some variation of contemporary music or a new phenomenon called "Didjeridu music".
I have, at my own expense, purchased and gifted many friends with field recordings of traditional pieces because they simply have never heard them and not invested the effort to seek them out. For most Didjeridu players in America, and especially amongst self taught ones, there is a common disregard for traditional indigenous music. They perceive that the Didjeridu is not the lead voice of the music and they loose interest. Indeed, the path of the Didjeridu, once separated from the sacred and brought into the mainstream dominate culture, is ego driven in the extreme. On many of the contemporary recordings the didj is not only the lead but the entire point. This has produced a market for didjeridus which are purchased with several considerations : Volume - the US consumer wants the didj to be as loud as possible; Pitch - the US consumer wants the didj to be "deep" - this is not an absolute pitch thing, but rather a perception; Bell - absolute, the US didjeriduist will almost always tell you they are looking for one with the biggest bell possible; Harmonics and Vocal amplification - didjs particularly suited for a solo voice, usually have a very open bore through the entire length, in euc, that often means thinning the outside walls and rasping out the inside extensively.
Another area where the instrument has become separated from the culture is in the artist decoration of the Didjeridu. Consumers in the US often have very distorted ideas about traditional artwork perpetuated by sellers who's concern is with moving instruments at a profit. Often price is adjusted by an opinion by the seller of the "worth" of the art. The most popular high priced didjs in the US often have art painted by artist not from Arnhem land, but rather South Australia. Done in acrylic paint and in the same style as canvas paintings described in the book "Songlines" , the US perception of "authentic" Aboriginal art is at best a reflection of what they have seen on canvas or in books without the realization that the artistic style and subject is not only associated with a different part of Australia than traditional Didjeridu lands, but the medium itself was created by entrepreneurs to create an artificial market place for themselves with little of the proceeds going back to the artist. Always ask about the artist who painted a didjeridu you are thinking of purchasing. Ask if that painted it made it. Ask also, if the location of the artist and the origin of the timber used is know. This would apply to the contemporary alternatives like Bondo , Agave or whatever. The person selling it to you should be able to answer your questions, direct you to someone who can or be honest enough to admit that they don't know. Can you tell if they are making it all up? I think you can get a pretty good idea. But, don't assume they are. Besides, and this is important to understand, they may believe ANYTHING themselves. All people can be wrong, it's a very human trait. Believe me I know.
Getting back to the idea that just providing people with an instrument and basic instructions on how to sound it is often used as justification for almost any act of blatant cultural theft. The market place is full of such examples. Although some companies and individuals have made efforts to turn this tide though various means, there are a few who's greed is so enormous that they have turned to off shore, third world manufacture and decoration of substitute instruments. Circumventing, not only the Australian Aboriginal communities, the Australian continent, but issues of fair labor and fair world trade. As if supplying cheap instruments for learning purposes where not enough, they use Australian Aboriginal art motifs and supply information on playing which is decidedly not Australian, but packaged in Australian motif clip art and with stories about Aboriginal Culture and perceived beliefs about the Didjeridu's role in the culture. If the goal is only to provide beginners with a low cost starter instrument, why then is there the perception that they must paint them with Kangaroos and Lizards, package them in Australian art with literature on Aboriginal culture? Always ask people selling didjeridus which are not made of Australian timber, where they were made and decorated.
So this has been were the path of the Didjeridu has led us over the last ten or twenty years. Starting with a fascination for a continent, it's indigenous populations and it's unique musical instrument - leading to an incredible global demand for access to the instrument for a variety of non-cultural reasons. A "market" was created, the role players stepped in with their various interests (few self less to be sure) and a new types of consumers being created every day (one born every minute?). And all during this time, the traditional owners of the instruments are the most talked about and the least listened to. The good news is that in the next twenty years, I think this situation will turn exactly around. But it will be through the long slow process of education for the buyers, performers and instructors. This is the most exciting time to become a Didjeridu player. And if your already a performer, instrument maker or instructor, the most challenging and rewarding paths are just appearing on the horizon. Though events like the Garma Festival, the success of various Aboriginal performers and artists and the increasing presence of web sites from various Aboriginal communities, the Aboriginal people are taking their place in the world wide community as equals and partners. An exciting and overdue experience for all people. Most especially those interested in the didjeridu.